The musketry grew in intensity, crackling like burning thorn, then fading before
bursting back into life. The dragoons were crowding the southern bank to swamp the
defenders with fire, but Sharpe could do nothing to help.
So, for the moment, he walked away.
In the valley of the Cavado, just twelve miles from the advance guard that fought the
ordenanqa across the ravine of the Misarella, the first British troops caught up with
Soult’s rearguard which protected the men and women still crossing the Ponte Nova. The
British troops were light dragoons and they could do little more than exchange carbine fire
with the French troops who were drawn across the road to fill the valley between the river and
the southern cliffs. But not far behind the dragoons the Brigade of Guards was marching, and
behind them was a pair of three-pounder cannons, guns that fired shot so light that they were
derided as toys, but on this day, when no one else could deploy artillery, the two toys were
worth their weight in gold.
The French rearguard waited while, a dozen miles away, the vanguard readied to attack the
Saltador. Two battalions of infantry would assault the bridge, but it was plain that they
would become mincemeat if the thick barrier of thorn were not removed from the bridge’s far
end. The abattis was four feet high and just as thick and made from two dozen thorn bushes that
had been tied together and weighted down with logs, and it made a formidable obstacle and so
a Forlorn Hope was proposed. A Forlorn Hope was a company of men who were expected to die,
but in doing so they would clear a path for their comrades, and usually such suicidal bands
were deployed against the heavily defended breaches of enemy fortresses, but today’s band
must cross the narrow remnant of a bridge and die under the flail of musket fire, and as they
died they were to clear away the thorn abattis. Major Dulong of the 31st Leger, the new
Legion d’Honneur medal still bright on his chest, volunteered to lead the Forlorn Hope. This
time he could not use darkness, and the enemy was far more numerous, but his hard face showed
no apprehension as he pulled on a pair of gloves and then twisted the loops of his saber
cords about his wrist so that he would not lose the weapon in the chaos he anticipated as the
thorns were wrenched aside. General Loison, who commanded the French vanguard, ordered
every available man to the river bank to swamp the ordenanga with musket, carbine and
even pistol fire and when the noise had swelled to a deafening intensity Dulong raised his
saber then swung it forward as a signal to advance.
The skirmishing company of his own regiment ran across the bridge. Three men could just
go abreast on the narrow ribbon of stone and Dulong was in the very first rank. The
ordenanqa roared their defiance and a volley blasted from the closest earthwork. Dulong
was hit in the chest, he heard the bullet strike his new medal and then distinctly heard the
snap as a rib broke and he knew the bullet must be in his lung, but he felt no pain. He tried to
shout, but his breath was very short, yet he began hauling at the thorns with his gloved hands.
More men came, cramming themselves on the bridge’s thin roadway. One slipped and fell
screaming into the white tumult of the Misarella. Bullets smacked into the Forlorn Hope,
the air was nothing but smoke and splintering noise and hissing bullets, but then Dulong
managed to pitch a whole section of the abattis into the river and there was a gap wide
enough to let a man through and big enough to save a trapped army, and he staggered through it,
saber raised, spitting bubbles of blood as his breath labored. A huge shout came from behind
him as the first of the support battalions ran toward the bridge with fixed bayonets.
Dulong’s surviving men cleared away the last of the thorn abattis, a dozen dead voltigeurs
were unceremoniously kicked over the roadway’s edge into the ravine, and suddenly the
Saltador was dark with French troops. They screamed a war cry as they came and the ordenanqa,
most of whom were still reloading after trying to stop Dulong’s Forlorn Hope, now fled.
Hundreds of men ran westward, climbing into the hills to escape the bayonets. Dulong
paused by the nearest abandoned earthwork and there he bent over, his saber dangling by the
cords tied to his wrist and a long dribble of mingled blood and saliva trickling from his
mouth. He closed his eyes and tried to pray.
“A stretcher!” a sergeant shouted. “Make a stretcher. Find a doctor!” Two French
battalions chased the ordenanqa away from the bridge. A few Portuguese still lingered on a
high rocky bluff to the left of the road, but they were too far away for their musket fire to be
anything except a nuisance and so the French let them stay there and watch an army
escape.
For Major Dulong had prized open the last jaws of the trap and the road north was open.
Sharpe, up in the rough ground south of the Misarella, heard the furious musketry and
knew the French must be assaulting the bridge and he prayed the ordenanqa would hold them,
but he knew they would fail. They were amateur soldiers, the French were professional and,
though men would die, the French would still cross the Misarella and once the first troops were
over then the rest of their army would surely follow.
So he had little time in which to cross the river which tumbled white in its deep rocky
ravine and Sharpe had to go more than a mile upstream before he found a place where they might
just negotiate the steep slopes and rain-swollen water. The mule would have to be abandoned
for the ravine was so precipitous that not even Javali could manhandle the beast down the
cliff and through the fast water. Sharpe ordered his men to strip the slings off their rifles
and muskets, then buckle or tie them together to make a long rope. Javali, eschewing such
an aid, scrambled down to the Misarella, waded through and began climbing the other side,
but Sharpe feared losing one of his men to a broken leg up in these hills and so he went more
slowly. The men eased themselves down, using the rope as a support, then passed down their
weapons. The river was scarcely a dozen paces across, but it was deep and its cold water
tugged hard at Sharpe’s legs as he led the crossing. The rocks underfoot were slick and
uneven. Tongue fell over and was swept a few yards downstream before he managed to haul
himself onto the bank. “Sorry, sir,” he managed to say through chattering teeth as water
drained from his cartridge box. It took over forty minutes for them all to cross the ravine and
climb its other side where, from a peak of rock, Sharpe could just see the cloud-shadowed hills
of Spain.
They turned east toward the bridge just as it began to rain again. All morning the dark
showers had slanted about them, but now one opened directly above them, and then a crash of
thunder bellowed across the sky. Ahead, far off to the south, there was a patch of sunshine
lightening the pale hills, but above Sharpe the sky grew darker and the rain heavier and he
knew the rifles would have difficulty firing in such a teeming downpour. He said nothing.
They were all cold and dispirited, the French were escaping and Christopher might already
be over the Misarella and on his way into Spain.
To their left the grass-grown road twisted up into the last Portuguese hills and they could
see dragoons and infantry slogging up the road’s tortuous bends, but those men were a
half-mile away and the rocky bluff was just ahead. Javali was already on its summit and he
warned the remnants of the ordenanga who waited among the ferns and boulders that the
uniformed men who approached were friends. The Portuguese, whose muskets were useless in the
heavy rain, had been reduced to throwing rocks that bounded down the bluff’s eastern face and
were nothing but a minor nuisance to the stream of French who crossed the thin lifeline
across the Misarella.
Sharpe shrugged off the ordenanqa who wanted to welcome him and threw himself down on
the bluff’s lip. Rain thrashed the rocks, poured down the cliff’s face and drummed on his shako.
A crash of thunder sounded overhead to be echoed by another from the southwest, and Sharpe
recognized the second peal as the sound of guns. It was cannon fire, and the noise meant that
Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army must have caught up with the French and that his artillery had
opened fire, but that fight was miles away, back beyond the Ponte Nova, and here, at the final
obstacle, the French were escaping.
Hogan, panting from the exertion of climbing the bluff, dronned beside Sharpe. They were
so close to the bridge they could see the mustaches on the faces of the French infantry, see
the striped brown-and-black pattern of a woman’s long skirt. She walked beside her man,
carrying his musket and his child, and had a dog tied to her belt by a length of string.
Behind them an officer led a limping horse. “Is that cannon I’m hearing?” Hogan asked.
“Yes, sir.“
“Must be the three-pounders,” Hogan guessed. “We could do with a couple of those toys
here.”
But they had none. Only Sharpe, Vicente and their men. And an army that was escaping.
Back at the Ponte Nova the gunners had manhandled their two toy cannon to the crest of a
knoll that overlooked the French rearguard. It was not raining here. An occasional flurry
whipped down from the mountains, but the muskets could still fire and the Brigade of Guards
loaded their weapons, fixed bayonets and then formed to advance in column of companies.
And the guns, the despised three-pounders, opened on the French and the small balls,
scarcely bigger than an orange each, whipped through the tight ranks and bounced on rock to
kill more Frenchmen, and the band of Coldstream Guards struck up “Rule Britannia” and the
great colors were unfurled to the damp air, and the three-pound balls struck again, each shot
leaving a long spray of blood in the air as though a giant unseen knife were slashing through
the French ranks. The two light companies of the Guards and a company of the green-jacketed
60th, the Royal American Rifles, were advancing among a jumble of rocks and low stone walls
on the French left flank and the muskets and Baker rifles began taking their toll of French
officers and sergeants. French skirmishers, men from the renowned 4th Leger, a regiment
chosen by Soult to guard his rear because the 4th was famous for its steadiness, ran forward
to drive the British skirmishers back, but the rifles were too much for them. They had never
faced such long-range accurate fire before and the voltigeurs backed away.
“Take them forward, Campbell, take them forward!” Sir Arthur Wellesley called to the
brigade’s commander and so the first battalion of the Coldstreamers and the first
battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards marched toward the bridge. Their bearskins made them seem
huge, the band’s drummers thumped for all they were worth, the rifles snapped and the two
three-pounders crashed back onto their trails to cut two more bloody furrows through the long
lines of Frenchmen.
“They’re going to break,” Colonel Waters said. He had served as Sir Arthur’s guide all day
and was watching the French rearguard through his glass. He could see them wavering, see the
sergeants dashing back and forth behind the ranks to push men into file. “They’re going to
break, sir.”
“Pray they do,” Sir Arthur said, “pray they do.” And he wondered what was happening far
ahead, whether the French escape route had been blocked. He already had a victory, but how
complete would it be?
The two battalions of Guards, both twice the size of an ordinary battalion, marched
steadily and their bayonets were two thousand specks of light in the cloud-dimmed valley and
their colors were red, white, blue and gold above them. And in front of them the French
shivered and the cannons fired again and the blood mist flickered in two long lines to show
where the round shots ploughed the files.
And Sir Arthur Wellesley did not even watch the Guards. He was staring up into the hills
where a great black rainfall blotted the view. “God grant,” he said fervently, “that the road
is cut.”
“Amen,” Colonel Waters said, “amen.”
The road was not blocked because a leaping strip of stone spanned the Misarella and a
seemingly endless line of French made their way across the hump-backed arch. Sharpe watched
them. They walked like beaten men, tired and sullen, and he could see from their faces how they
resented the handful of engineer officers who chivvied them across the bridge. In April
these men had been the conquerors of northern Portugal and they had thought they were about
to march south and capture Lisbon. They had plundered all the country north of the Douro:
they had ransacked houses and churches, raped women, killed men and strutted like the cocks
of the dunghill, but now they had been whipped, broken and chased, and the distant sound of the
two cannon told them that their ordeal was not yet over. And above them, on the rock-strewn
hill crests, they could see dozens of bitter men who just waited for a straggler and then the
knives would be sharpened, the fires lit, and every Frenchman in the army had heard the
stories of the horribly mutilated corpses found in the highlands.
Sharpe just watched them. Every now and then the bridge arch would be cleared so that a
recalcitrant horse could be coaxed over the narrow span. Riders were peremptorily
ordered to climb down from their saddles and two hussars were on hand to blindfold the
horses and lead them across the stone remnant. The rain eased and then became heavy again. It
was getting dark, an unnatural dusk brought by black cloud and veils of rain. A general, his
uniform heavy with sodden braid, followed his blindfolded horse across the bridge. The
water seethed white far below him, bouncing off the rocks of the ravine, twisting in pools,
foaming on down to the Cavado. The General hurried off the bridge and then had trouble
remounting his horse. The ordenanqa jeered him and hurled a volley of rocks, but the
missiles merely bounced on the bluff’s lower slopes and rolled harmlessly toward the
road.